Eastern Promises: unbearable tension

A man’s throat is violently slit in a barber’s shop. A young woman haemorrhages in a chemist shop, and then dies in childbirth in a hospital, leaving behind her baby and a diary. So begins the story of London’s underbelly of crime and the Russian mafia, and two characters enmeshed in it: one in the course of circumstances; the other by choice.

There’s a quiet tension about David Cronenberg’s latest film ‘Eastern Promises’ which makes it impossible to take your eyes off the screen. You realise something dark and dangerous is going to happen – as it happens in all Cronenberg films – and yet you hope for something good… to neutralise the terror and panic that you experience.

To this extent, ‘Eastern Promises’ keeps its promise as a Cronenberg original… perhaps to a somewhat anti-climactic end.

The dead girl’s diary is picked up by the midwife at the hospital, Anna, played by Naomi Watts, who feels responsible for finding the family of the dead girl in order to handover the new-born baby to them. The diary, written in Russian by the dead girl, contains incriminating evidence against the leader of the Russian mafia. But Anna doesn’t know this, and she, in her eagerness to have it translated, unknowingly steps into the heart of the Russian mafia in London.

When Anna takes help from an elderly Russian restaurateur, Semyon, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, who promises to translate the diary for her, Anna does not realise that she is in fact dealing with the very person she should be running away from. For, unknown to her, under the facade of a respectable restaurateur, Semyon is the leader of the Russian mafia in London… and is only too keen to dispose of the diary, the baby and Anna.

But Semyon doesn’t get his hands dirty. For that he has his son Kiril, played by Vincent Cassel, and his son’s loyal friend, the driver, Nikolai, played admirably by Viggo Mortensen. It is the driver Nikolai who is really at the centre of this film: an eerie, deadly-as-a-snake, man-of-few-words anti-hero who is efficient in his work for the Russian mafia and trusted by his bosses (both Semyon and his son Kiril).

When Nikolai is assigned to retrieve the diary from Anna, you are certain Anna’s life, and that of the baby, are in danger. Yet, all through the film, the threat upon Anna and the baby is subdued – almost as if director Cronenberg wants you to agonise over it. And you do… to the very end of the film… through various twists and turns in the plot. As I’ve said earlier, the tension never goes away. And so, ‘Eastern Promises’ is a film you must see and experience.

[For Indian viewers, there’s a disappointment. A key scene towards the end of the film – a violent fight sequence in a steam bath with Nikolai, where he is mortally wounded – has been deleted… more for reasons of nudity than violence (apparently, Mortensen is totally naked in this scene). However, if it’s any consolation, there are some dialogues in Hindi in the beginning of the film.]